Former Taunton woman convicted of impeding murder investigation

A district court jury today convicted a former Taunton woman of misleading police in connection to the 2010 shooting death of city resident Joseph Dugan.

Charles Winokoor Taunton Gazette Staff Reporter @cwinokoor

A jury convicted a former Taunton woman on Wednesday of intentionally misleading detectives investigating the 2010 shooting death of city resident Joseph E. Dugan.

Amanda Melendez, 22, formerly of Washington Street, dabbed away tears as the jury foreman read her conviction on two counts of witness intimidation.

Minutes later, Melendez appeared relieved when district court Judge Mary Elizabeth Heffernan imposed a 60-day prison sentence, suspended for two years. That means she will avoid serving any jail time if she doesn't violate her probation during the two-year period.

The jury trial started Tuesday afternoon, with closing arguments by the defense and prosecution being delivered late Wednesday afternoon. It took the jury about an hour to reach its verdict.

Bristol County Assistant District Attorney Dennis Collins asked that Melendez be sentenced to a year in jail with one year's probation upon her release. Her court-appointed lawyer, Paul Carlucci, asked for probation and no jail time.

To date, no one has been charged with the murder of Dugan, who was 33 when he was shot once in the back of the head in front of 11 Granite St. just after midnight on July 8, 2010.

Nancy Dugan, mother of Joseph Dugan, and her daughter, Kathleen Mendonca, were both incensed with the verdict.

"She knows who did it," Mendonca, 39, said of Melendez, who reportedly now lives with her baby with a sister in Connecticut.

Both women said they won't be satisfied until a shooting suspect is arrested and stands trial. Dugan also accused Melendez of "shopping" for an inexperienced judge who might be inclined to impose a lenient sentence.

Heffernan was recently appointed as a district court judge. She previously was Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety and before that was Undersecretary of Criminal Justice and a Middlesex County assistant district attorney.

Bristol DA C. Samuel Sutter said via email that he thinks highly of Heffernan, "but this sentence was flat-out wrong."

He wrote, "This judge is probably not aware that we have solved 19 of our last 20 homicides (in the county)."

Sutter said in order to stem the tide of witnesses lying to homicide investigators "jail has to be the outcome" when an individual is convicted.

"This sentence sends out the wrong message," he wrote.

Dugan was shot at close range with a 9mm handgun as he reclined on the front steps of the Granite Street apartment house while chatting with a female friend and her mother, both of whom lived there. Neither woman was injured.

The gun was never located.

Dugan family members have previously told the Taunton Daily Gazette that the killing was a case of mistaken identity, and was likely misguided retribution for the stabbingof 17-year-old Tigan Hollingsworth — who was chased down by a group of men at Grampy's convenience store and killed a half-block away in a Weir Street backyard less than two weeks before.

Two men have been convicted of murder in that case with a third set to stand trial this year.

According to police, Hollingsworth was also close friends with the late Devon Hodo, who was 16 in 2008 when he was stabbed to death in the Charles L. Flannery Memorial Playground at First Street and Presbrey Court.

Police at the time said they suspected the killing resulted from two feuding groups, one from Taunton and the other Brockton.

No one was ever arrested for killing Hodo, who was also shot in the leg earlier that year while standing in front of Grampy's.

In 2010, Taunton police said the non-fatal shooting of two teens on White Street might also have been retribution by friends of Hollingsworth.

During his opening statement to the jury, Collins said Jeremy L. Rhoden, now 23, and Donnelle Bates, with whom Melendez had a child, were both good friends with Hollingsworth.

Rhoden, police said, left Massachusetts shortly after the Dugan shooting and played a game of cat and mouse, claiming by phone that he was in Florida when he in fact was in Alabama.

After the Dugan shooting, Bates eventually enrolled in the Teen Challenge Program in Pennsylvania, which provides an alternative to incarceration.

Rhoden later was convicted of witness intimidation in connection with the Dugan case and served time in jail.

Bates is still in state lockup, having violated probation when he broke rules of the Teen Challenge Program by speaking at length numerous times by phone with Melendez.

Collins convinced the jury that Melendez initially told detective Christopher Dumont, a state trooper assigned to the DA's office, that she never discussed the Dugan shooting with Bates and that she didn't know that Bates and Rhoden were close friends.

Collins said, she also lied to Dumont when she claimed she wasn't personally close to Ariana Sims — Rhoden's girlfriend and mother of at least one his children — when she had been with Sims when she gave birth at the hospital.

After the sentence was handed down, Dumont said that he will continue to pursue leads in the Dugan shooting.

The state's witness intimidation statute was amended in 2006 to clarify that it covers individuals who obstruct an investigation by intentionally misleading police.

In October 2013, police also arrested three Brockton men for attempted murder for their involvement in the stabbing of an Abington man outside a Bridgewater bar.

One of them was former Taunton resident James Chalmers. The other two were Jason Hodo, 23, and Nicholas Hodo, 44, both of whom were related to the late Devon Hodo, according to police sources.